Associated costs of Named Person legislation: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for "...the costs associated with the above legislation from when the Supreme Court ruled parts of the legislation as being flawed until the SG announced that it was dropping the legislation this week.
The costs should include the various groups that were tasked to find a way round the Supreme Court ruling."

Response

Most of the information you have requested is available already under previous Freedom of Information request publications, which can be found here:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-201900000319/
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-01704/
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-17-02462/

For clarity, the Scottish Government acknowledged and accepted the decisions of the Supreme Court judgment, which also recognised the aims of the 2014 Act as “unquestionably legitimate and benign”.  The Scottish Government sought to address the Supreme Court’s concerns through the introduction of the Children and Young People (Information Sharing) (Scotland) Bill.  No groups were ever tasked with a view to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision.  You may, however, be interested in the work of the Practice Development Panel (the Panel), whose remit included the development of Code of Practice, to support the Bill, which properly reflected relevant legal requirements.

The first link provides information on the cost of the Panel and its Legal Focus Group, which was convened in order to develop an authoritative Code of Practice on information sharing to assist the Education and Skills Committee’s considerations of the Information Sharing Bill.  The Panel subsequently concluded that the new data protection legislation, alongside updated practice guidance, could provide necessary safeguards to support good information sharing practice within the GIRFEC approach, without the need for a statutory code of practice or further legislation.

The second link relates to the costs of preparing for implementation of named person and child’s plan policy and, finally, the third relates to legal costs of defending the relevant provisions of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 through the Courts of Session and Supreme Court.

Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The figure mentioned in the above FOI response publication includes a cost of £350, 000, which was incurred by the Scottish Government to cover the appellants' expenses. This is broken down as £185, 000 for the Inner and Outer House Courts of Session expenses and a further £165, 000 in relation to the Supreme Court appeal.

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